As things stand to-day, a thief caught in the very act of picking a pocket in the night-time may challenge arbitrarily the twenty most intelligent talesmen called to sit as jurors in his case.

Does such a practice make for justice?
It is even possible that the sacred bird of liberty would not scream if eleven jurors, instead of twelve, were permitted to convict a defendant or set him free, while the question of how far the right of appeal in criminal cases might properly be limited or, in default of such limitation, how far under certain conditions it might be correspondingly extended to the community, is by no means purely academic.* It is also conceivable that some means might be found to do away with the interminable technicalities which can now be interposed on behalf of the accused to prevent trials or the infliction of sentence after conviction.
* "Limitation of the Right of Appeal in Criminal Cases," by Nathan A.
Smythe, 17 Harvard Law Rev.317 (1905).
Yet these considerations are of slight moment in contrast to that most crying of all present abuses,--the domination of the court-room by the press.* It is no fiction to say that in many cases the actual trial is conducted in the columns of yellow journals and the defendant acquitted or convicted purely in accordance with an "editorial policy." Judges, jurors, and attorneys are caricatured and flouted.

There is no evidence, how ever incompetent, improper, or prejudicial to either side, excluded by the judge in a court of criminal justice, that is not deliberately thrust under the noses of the jury in flaring letters of red or purple the moment they leave the court-room.

The judge may charge one way in accordance with the law of the land, while the editor charges the same jury in double-leaded paragraphs with what "unwritten" law may best suit the owner of his conscience and his pen.

"Contempt of court" in its original significance is something known today only to the reader of text books.** *Cf.